


twined

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 23:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13868682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Not the Web; never the Web.





	twined

**Author's Note:**

> this went from 'man i love all the web!martin stuff but what if a _different_ domain for martin' very swiftly into 'oh god what have i done, i have regrets'

Jon dreams, sometimes, of Martin taken by the Web. Twisted into something not human, not _right_ and it—

He’s a hypocrite, he knows. It’s not as though the Eye is going to leave him (has left him) his own humanity either - his personhood, for now, but not his humanity - and Martin doesn’t begrudge him that.

Martin holds him close, Jon and the Archivist both, and when he’s too far into one or the other, when they disconnect enough that he’s not truly both, Martin doesn’t even push. He’ll let Jon cling to him, desperate and terrified when the nightmares come and he’s all-too-human; when he’s shaking and horrified by what he’s seen and what he’s become; when he’s too human to cope with not being human. He’ll let the Archivist pry secrets from him, cold and unfeeling when the statements are too much and not enough at the same time; when it needs _information_ but can’t bear to shake and fear and drag its way through another statement; when there have been three statements that week and everything aches but the need for knowledge still burns in its throat and its eyes and its head.

So the dreams of Martin taken by the Web shouldn’t shake him the way they do, shouldn’t leave him breathless with terror. It wouldn’t trap him any more than the Eye already does, wouldn’t have to twist him any more than the Eye has twisted Jon - too much, too much, and not enough - and… and Jon suspects the Web would care for Martin a great deal more than the Eye ever has.

But he wakes shaking and breathless with fear from every one of those dreams, nonetheless, remembers _A Guest For Mr. Spider_ and is still filled with just as much fear and disgust more than twenty years on as he was on the day he first saw the awful thing. He clings to Martin, then, lets Martin hold him and selfishly begs him every time to never choose the Web, to turn anywhere but there if he ever manages to pull himself free of the Eye.

“I promise, Jon,” Martin tells him, with the tone of someone who doesn’t understand that he’s not meant for the Eye; of someone who can’t see like Jon can the way that the Web would thread so perfectly around him. “I promise.”

(he says it like it means nothing, likes it’s only a reassurance and nothing more, and Jon has no words to explain how much he wants to make it a binding tighter than the Web could ever provide)

* * *

There are spiders, when Martin is dying. They crawl over his skin, and track blood across to what parts of it are unblemished, and they whisper to him of the threads of the Web. He could join them, they whisper, and the Web would save him as the Eye has not. The Web would love him as the Eye has not.

But Martin thinks of Jon, of Jon waking night after night with that haunted look in his eyes and pleading with Martin, _not the Web, never the Web_ , and the Eye might never have loved Martin but Jon does. Jon does, and Martin can’t bear to think of that haunted look aimed truly, really at him, at the Martin in reality rather than the Martin in Jon’s nightmares.

So he tells the spiders no, and they whisper sadly amongst themselves, and they tell him they will stay with him until his end. He will not be theirs, but he could have been, and so the Web will not abandon him as the Eye has done; they will stay, and they will mourn him, this human that could have belonged with them.

“I don’t want to die,” Martin tells the spiders, and they crawl across his skin and do not whisper to him of the Web that could still take him, even now, if only he said the word. This is the only kindness they can offer him, when he will not be theirs, but they offer it freely because he could have been, and because they wish, still, that he would choose to be.

“I don’t want to die,” he says again, and this time he isn’t telling the spiders.

“I don’t want to die,” he says, and he knows that the Eye is listening because the Eye is _always_ listening; it watches, it waits, it listens, and it will never _act_ even to save its Archivist, let alone a lowly archival assistant. There is no help coming from the Eye, no matter what and how much Martin has given to it.

“Please,” he says, and it’s not for the Eye because the Eye doesn’t care enough; not for the spiders because Martin cares too much. He doesn’t know who it’s for. Anyone, anything, that’ll listen and act because _he doesn’t want to die_.

“Anything?”

The voice is familiar, but Martin can’t place it, and his eyes are too heavy to open. His whole body is too heavy to move, and he can barely even feel the weight of the spiders leaving him as the blanket of them flees in what he knows to be fear. He should be afraid too, afraid of whatever would scare them this way, but he’s so tired and the only thing he can bring himself to fear is dying here.

So he thinks _yes, anything_ , and there’s a laugh that makes his skull grate, and somehow Martin finds the strength in him to lift his arm and reach out. To grip the extended hand and let it draw blood, like he hasn’t shed enough of it already.

(although he hasn’t, perhaps, because he’s never shed blood for _this_ one)

* * *

Martin isn’t himself when he comes back to Jon. Or, he is, but he’s not—

Jon can’t find a word for it. He’s not entirely sure there _is_ one, and he suspects that’s rather how the Spiral likes it; to be unknowable, to be known too much, no words or too many words and never anything in between.

He has a lot of words for Martin. Has learned him, in touches and presence and compelled secrets. He hopes, more than anything, that those words will remain true, even if further words that don’t make sense are added to them.

“There were spiders,” Martin tells him, and there’s a wrinkle to his nose that Jon associates with him saying something he’d rather not have to say. It’s the easily-given truth, Jon thinks, that brings on that expression now.

“Spiders?”

Martin nods, and fusses about making tea. He only makes one cup.

“They offered. You know. To help.” He glances at Jon. “They could have, but you always told me not to choose them.”

It’s an accusation; Jon made him turn away the force he would have been best suited for. It’s a simple statement; that’s the way things happened. It’s an expression of gratitude; he belongs to the Spiral, and Jon prevented him from being taken by another force.

Jon’s teeth ache, and he wants to cry; Martin cocks his head when Jon thinks that, and Jon suspects he _knows_ in some way.

“And so you chose the Spiral,” he says, because the silence between them while Martin looks at him with too-bright eyes is unbearable.

“Something like that,” Martin says, and it’s not really an answer.

Jon can’t expect much more from him, not now. A Martin given to the Web would have answered his questions easily enough, he expects, because Martin has answered his questions easily enough in the past and has always been better suited for the Web than he ever was for the Eye. This Martin, this Spiral thing that looks and moves and does not quite talk like Martin, does not and will not and probably cannot give him clear and proper answers the way he had done before.

Martin does set the cup of tea down in front of him when it’s made, though, though he doesn’t have one of his own. He smiles at Jon, and if the smile is too wide then Jon can at least focus on the fact that it’s a smile on Martin’s face, and that if it hadn’t been for the Spiral there wouldn’t ever have been a smile on Martin’s face again.

( _and_ _if it hadn’t been for you, he’d have gone to the Web and stayed himself_ , Jon thinks, bitter, and does not drink the tea that sits ice-cold in the cup already but still steams when Martin leaves the room and he can pour it down the sink)

* * *

Martin knows that Jon is afraid of him after all. He can feel it like a sickness in his stomach, except that a sickness wouldn’t put a spring in his step and, anyway, he’s not sure he actually has a stomach anymore.

He wonders if the Web would have been better after all, if Jon would have been less scared of him that way in the end.

He tells the thing that calls itself Michael that. It’s not there, but he tells it anyway, and it smiles and taps its fingers together and the clicking sounds like music to Martin’s ears; the neighbor’s baby starts to scream, inconsolable, through the wall.

“Perhaps,” it agrees. “Perhaps he would have been. Would you rather have chosen that, after all?”

“Yes,” Martin says, and, “No.” He can’t tell whether one or both or neither of them was aloud, can’t tell whether one or the other or both came first. He supposes it doesn’t much matter.

“That is correct,” the thing agrees. “For a value of correct.”

(Martin doesn’t ask what it means, because he doubts it could give him a straight answer if it wanted to and, really, it doesn’t)

* * *

The spiders come to Jon. He’s sitting on the steps outside Martin’s building and not ringing the bell for his flat, trying not to think about the fact that he’s reasonably certain Martin knows he’s out there, and the spiders come.

They mill around his legs without touching him, and once upon a time he would have moved immediately, or tried to kill them, or both. Now he only watches them, and sighs, and lifts his glasses to rub at his eyes tiredly.

“Have you come to punish me for taking him away from you? To make me feel guilty? Rub my nose in the fact I was wrong?”

The spiders say nothing. They just mill around him, keeping an inch away from him at all times, and make it known that they don’t need to do that. He’s doing all of those things just fine on his own.

Jon sighs, again, and flicks a glance up at Martin’s window. There’s something looking back out at him. It isn’t Martin. He looks away.

“I could go with him,” he says, as much to himself as to the spiders. “I’m sure Michael would be thrilled at the idea of stealing the Archivist. I could join him.”

He couldn’t, the spiders do not tell him. He’s belonged to the Eye for much too long for that, ever since he was eight years old and watching the Web do its work. The Spiral is not for him, any more than Filth or Darkness or the Hunt ever have been.

“Could Martin still choose you?” Jon asks the spiders instead, because he knows what they hadn’t told him is true. “He was tied to the Eye before he chose the Spiral, could he…?”

He could, the spiders do not say. Martin could always choose the Web, _would_ always choose the Web if he knew that Jon had left the option open. The Web and the Eye are much more in tune, too - what better way to examine something than to hold it in place?

Martin could choose the Web. Martin would choose the Web. The Web could and would always beat the Spiral, where Martin is concerned.

Jon looks back at Martin’s window, empty now, and then at the spiders.

“Is he Martin, though?” he asks. “Is he still Martin?”

(the spiders say nothing)


End file.
